


When

by tarysande



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Gift Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-29
Updated: 2018-01-29
Packaged: 2019-03-10 23:22:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13511898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tarysande/pseuds/tarysande
Summary: Garrus Vakarian is captivated by Commander Shepard's strange (beautiful, competent, miraculous) human hands.





	When

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BethAdastra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BethAdastra/gifts).



> Written for Mass Effect Holiday Cheer's 2017/2018 January Jubilation gift exchange.

**_Normandy_ ** **SR-1**

Garrus was familiar with humans, of course. During his time at C-Sec, he’d had enough colleagues on one side of the table and perps on the other to learn quite a lot about the intricacies of the expressions their malleable faces wore. He’d had time to grow accustomed to the multi-colored hair on their heads and faces. He’d seen their small, five-fingered hands form fists and clutch firearms and fill out countless after-action reports.

The hands, he decided, were the strangest.

And the most captivating.

Shepard’s especially.

He’d done time in the turian military; he was well-versed in turian hand signals. Hell, C-Sec was a turian brainchild; it was the humans who’d had to adapt their five-fingered hands to signals designed for three digits.

Joining Shepard’s squad was different. His were the hands that needed to adapt. Because Shepard’s Alliance-trained gestures were so different, he found himself watching her hands carefully all the time, both on and off the field.

He’d never noticed how often humans punctuated their words with their hands. He’d never noticed the way human hands sometimes told different stories than the human faces above them. Even when Shepard’s expression gave him little to go on, it was surprising how often her hands gave him the clues he needed to figure out if she was pissed or frustrated or even, on an occasion or two, sad.

If he were still filling out forms and running into red tape at C-Sec, he’d probably have sent out a memo. _Note to non-human C-Sec personnel: Watch their hands; surprisingly effective gauge of mood/thoughts/imminent violence._

Then again, maybe someone—Pallin, Chellick, his dad—had already sent that memo, and he’d ignored it.

He knew better now.

But it wasn’t just battlefield hand signals and punctuation, not with Shepard. When she settled her small hand on Wrex’s huge shoulder and gave it a pat, Garrus hadn’t been able to contain his flinch. But Wrex only smiled and grumbled something about humans being soft. Didn’t move his shoulder out from under the touch, though.

Shepard’s fingers seemed impossibly nimble—not awkward or extraneous at all—when he watched her break down her weapons and clean them so impeccably even Garrus’ father wouldn’t have been able to find fault with her work. He certainly couldn’t. Hell, it was a show he’d watch all day if he hadn’t worried about having to explain himself if he got caught staring.

**Omega**

Squinting through his scope, so tired and strung out on stims he thought he was hallucinating, he noticed the N7—white and red and impossible—first. From his sniper’s perch, he couldn’t see the details of the face behind the helmet. He blinked twice, though it cost him a second he could have spent blowing another head off another set of shoulders.

Idiot mercs and their idiot cannon fodder. Pointless. So damned pointless.

Idiot Archangel and the idiot trust he’d given to Lantar Sidonis.

_Pointless_.

The N7 didn’t disappear when he blinked, though. A moment later, a human hand lifted, gestured, and a pair of other soldiers—in Cerberus colors, of all things; that last batch of stims had been a mistake—swept out to either side, removing heads from shoulders for him.

His eyes didn’t leave the N7-armor-clad hand. Not even when that hand dropped to cradle a gun. Not even when the finger squeezed the trigger, sending a spray of bullets into the backs of the same idiot mercs that were trying to kill him.

Two years.

It was a long time.

Not long enough for him to forget Shepard’s hands, Shepard’s gestures.

When those hands spread wide and a dead woman said, “Garrus!” not fifteen minutes later, he let himself hope.

When those hands took the rifle he offered, and the rifle did not clatter to the ground the way it would have done if they were a ghost’s hands, he let himself believe.

And when, through the thunder of agony, he recognized Shepard’s hands, blue-stained and tentatively, gently touching his broken face, he let himself believe he had something to live for after all, no matter what the damned gunship had intended.

**_Normandy_ ** **SR-2**

Before they went through the Omega-4 relay, Garrus learned new things about human hands that put his imagination to shame and would _never_ have made it into a C-Sec memo.

Human hands were warm, and soft, and strangely smooth, but they could clutch the curve of waist or jut of hip as firmly as any turian hand. Shepard’s hands were pale; her nails kept short and blunt. The scrape of those nails down his hide made him shiver.

The gentle pressure of her fingertips against his aching slit made him shake.

And when she curled her fingers around the base of his cock and began to stroke— _soft, warm, firm, Spirits_ —he saw stars, stars and the smug smirk just beginning to tilt the corners of Shepard’s mouth.

So, he stole the advantage— _reach, flexibility_ —and twisted her onto her back, capturing her nimble hands, her devious hands, her _perfect_ hands in his and pinning them above her head.

“You know what they say about turnabout,” he murmured against the side of her neck, where he could feel her pulse racing against his mandible.

Human hands—Shepard’s hands—clutched and clenched and scrabbled in the sheets, and when she came— _softwarmfirm_ —with his name on her tongue, her fingers dug into his shoulders hard enough to bring her name to his tongue, too.

Afterward, as her fingers drew lazy circles against the hide at his waist, he watched them through half-lidded eyes and wondered why he’d ever thought five-fingered hands anything less than miraculous.

**Menae**

When the galaxy went to hell set to the inexorable soundtrack of Reaper klaxons screaming, Garrus’ world shrank to the size of his war map. Systems flashed red and dark; worlds glowed until they didn’t; ships vanished faster than he could keep track of.

He got a message that Earth had fallen.

His hands closed into fists, then. He did not smash his war map; he did not throw the offending datapad to the ground. He just nodded. Nodded, grabbed a rifle, and went to the edge of the encampment to shoot at Reaper forces until he was out of heat sinks and he could pretend he was all right.

He wasn’t, of course. But hell. Who was?

The Reapers wailed and wailed.

And then, not unlike that N7 he’d spotted through his scope when he’d thought his life was already over, a name came over the comms. A name. A request.

Hope.

Back at base, Shepard’s hand was there, reaching out. Corinthus watched him, missing nothing. Garrus paid him to miss nothing; he sure as shit wasn’t going to miss _this_ , even if the gesture was a human one.

With Palaven burning behind him and the shriek of husks still ringing in his ears, Garrus didn’t give a single damn. He took Shepard’s hand, shook it. Held it like it was the most precious thing in a galaxy in its death throes that had already lost far, far too much.

Maybe it was. He’d seen these hands do the impossible on more than one occasion, after all.

He didn’t think he imagined the hint of a smile as his other hand closed over their joined grip.

One brief instant stolen for them—Shepard and Vakarian—since he knew they’d be back to their impossibly heavy roles in the space of a heartbeat or two or three. Commander Shepard, resident savior of the galaxy. Garrus Vakarian, the turian Hierarchy’s Expert Advisor on the Reaper Threat.

“I’m hard to kill,” he said, with the first hint of a smile since he’d received news from Taetrus. “You should know that.”

Shepard smiled back, broader, and he definitely didn’t imagine the genuine relief in her voice when she said, “Good to see you again.”

And when, a few minutes later, she asked if he was coming, he didn’t hesitate. Her hand gestured, though he already knew where she was sending him.

Into hell. At her back. Just like old times.

When his hands, ever so faintly trembling, reached for his rifle, he knew that until the end of the galaxy, he’d never let himself be directed anywhere else, by any hands other than hers.


End file.
